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Friday, January 30, 2015

Why the Myths are Bad

Two articles about Honduras were in my news feed. One was about the horrific consequences of Neo-Liberalism (see neoliberalism-versus-economic-policy]. The other was about the wonderful prospects of privatizing Honduran Cities -- which is a neo-liberal myth! The two articles illustrate the evil that is done by authoritarian privateers using neo-colonialist methods, neoliberalism myths and corrupt power to advance private separate wealth and power over the general welfare of their own countries.

The Article also illustrate why it is so hard to the avatars of neoliberalism. Neo-liberalism (called Conservatism in the USA) is hard to fight because the myths around it are "social dominance" enhancing myths, they make it easier for the ambitious "social climbers" to create and climb hierarchies of wealth and power -- and to seize niches in those hierarchies. I'm going to use Honduras as the example for today. But the exact same narrative occurs when talking to authoritarian followers from Russia, other Eastern-European countries and where-ever there is a constant churn between anarchism, oligarchy and dictatorship. It also is occurring under the auspices of International Banking and the IMF with pirates who don't wear Eye Patches but tend to prefer Armani Power Suits instead.

Now Oligarchy is based on human pecking orders where the persons at the top are like dominant roosters and the rest form a hierarchy of oppression:

This hierarchy leads those near the top of the pecking order to feel relatively safe and secure. Especially when there is a Dominant Alpha "fearless leader" at the top of the pecking order. This gives the pyramid the illusion of being stable as long as there is a current "King" or dictator at the top. The trouble starts when the Dictator (or King) dies and there is a succession fight for which Rooster will take his or her place as Dominant Alpha. During the fight the numbers of "pecked" Chickens (and ones served for dinner) increases.

Trouble is that the official narrative looks back at naked tyranny with nostalgia. The problem with dictatorships is that both dictatorship and internal strife are symptoms of oligarchy, and the oligarchs rewrite the history to blame their victims for the insurrections that their oppression causes. So the period when a dictator sat on the lid of economic and social progress seem like peaceful times compared to what happens when the lid blows off!

Now if you remember this chart:

The chart showed one square with "hierarchy enhancing" and "hierarchy attenuating" myths. The myth of the fearless leader, the "wise monarch" the better days when there was a King, is a myth that is a 'hierarchy enhancing" myth. Democracy, "equality", "equal rights" and "equal justice" are Hierarchy attenuating myths." But myths get established because causality and correlation are not always the same. But the "king" in his place seems (especially to dominant individuals or folks who see their place in the middle of a hierarchy) to be a preferable state to the anarchy of transition or what happens when folks don't accept the pecking order. Thus you get folks who look back to naked tyranny of past times as a good thing.

Two Radically different reactions to the Same information

Thus you get two radically different reactions to the same information.

"Sanchez heard Romer’s argument—that cities are the best, cheapest way to offer people a good life, and therefore building new cities for the world is a smart approach to solving poverty—and he brought it home. Its Honduran and U.S. promoters compare the ZEDEs to Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Cayman Islands." [New Republic article]

That sounds good to me too. What's so bad about having healthy cities? But then you have the reasoning that Sanchez employs:

But it doesn't work

So Sanchez's solution to the lawlessness and impunity problem is to give free reign to multinationalist companies (and give the police more impunity). Yet the policies he's putting into effect are actually increasing impunity (impunidad), inequality and oppression. What gives? Sanchez' project would:

"According to the ZEDE law, the project will work like this: An investor, either international or local, builds infrastructure—a port, a mine, or a textile factory, for instance. The territory in which they invest becomes an autonomous zone from Honduras, like Hong Kong nominally is to China. The investing company must write the laws that govern the territory, establish the local government, hire a private police force, and even has the right to set the educational system and collect taxes." [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120559/honduras-charter-cities-spearheaded-us-conservatives-libertarians"]

What is happening is that Sanchez and his group believe in the "hierarchy" enhancing myths of free enterprise and top down government, while other myths are at war with them. Notions like social equality, socialism, and democracy. Free enterprise is a great idea, but it's a myth that oligarchic companies practice it. Instead they practice oppression, which:

In Sanchez' Schema once everyone accepts the hierarchy he's establishing and the "criminal elements" are locked up or eliminated the country will once again experience paradise. But to many of his people they are already experiencing a nightmare.

Somehow Sanchez seems to believe that arrogating power to a centralized unchecked unregulated and self policing "elite" force will minimize "impunity, poverty and violence", something that objective facts don't support. But it makes a nice slogan. Giving police more impunity will reduce their impunity. Yeah, right.

But of course it's not really intended to do that. What it's intended to do is to dominate Honduran Society for the sake of social dominant folks like Sanchez and the "foreign investors" who want to run the country. What they depend on are socially submissive "Authoritarian followers" to accept their place in the hierarchy so that the top Rooster will rule the roost and the social dominance pecking order myths can be told to little children as fairy tales. They depend on the sort of thinking described in the New Republic piece: